What is the value? Who perceives the value?

'You have a major impact on how the value is perceived.'

You have been making value perceptions and value judgments your entire life.

You may call them decisions, moments of truth or actions. Intuitively they focus around value – and your perception of it – or the weight you put toward it as these decisions or actions are taken or made.

It’s the same in sales, but in the selling process there are two values of perception and two value judgments. One is the value perception and judgment you make, and the other is the value perception and judgment the customer makes.

Obviously the customer’s value judgment and perception rules the selling process. However, you, the salesperson, have a major impact on how the value is perceived and ultimately how their judgment is made.

Your value judgments come from:

• How you feel about your company.

• How you feel about your product.

• How you feel about yourself.

• How you feel about the customer and their buying process.

You’ve placed a value on yourself that reflects in your selling skills, your attitude, your belief system, your truthfulness and your ethics. If you are willing to compromise any of those, you’ll never be a successful salesperson in the long term.

That’s you.

And then there is the customer. Whether they’re an existing customer or a prospect, they’re making all kinds of value judgments about you, your product and your company – in that order.

Much of their judgment about you is being made during the presentation itself, but as the digital age progresses many of these perceptions and judgments are made way before you (the salesperson) enter the scene.

These days, Mother Google can create preconceived value notions that don’t simply revolve around your product or your price; that’s just one part of the equation. Your personal reputation and your company’s reputation play a major role in the customer’s perception and judgment of value.

Every salesperson uses Google to find more information about the company and the person they are going to meet. That same salesperson NEVER takes the same amount of time to Google themselves to see what the potential customer is finding out about them.

It’s a major mystery to me why salespeople still believe they are invisible. Meanwhile, your reputation (and/or lack of it) is totally available to the customer way before you ever enter their office.

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